They ran a store in the gold fields for a few years;[1] by 1858 the brothers were running the largest oil company in the West.

By the time Singer stopped using independent distributors in the 1880s, Stanford was a wealthy man.

[3] He donated his books on Australia and his art collection to the university, and underwrote the construction of a library to house them.

[6] The first Director of the Gallery was Pedro Joseph de Lemos, the former head of the San Francisco Art Institute, who staged during his tenure from 1917 to 1945 a near continuous series of exhibitions focused on important contemporary artists as well as crafts.

[8] He died 28 August 1918, at his home in East Melbourne, and left the bulk of his estate to Stanford University.